Focus Entertainment has just released Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 for PC. Powered by an updated version of the Swarm Engine, it's time to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC, so let's dive in.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB DDR5 at 6000MHz, AMD's Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA's GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 560.94, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.8.1 drivers. In addition, we disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
Space Marine 2 has some graphics settings that can be tweaked. PC players can adjust the quality of texture filters, textures, shadows, effects, and more. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 2 and AMD FSR 2. And while there's no support for DLSS 3 and FSR 3.0, Saber plans to add those via a post-launch update.
Saber hasn't added a built-in benchmark tool in this game, so we used this scene for both our CPU and GPU benchmarks. This was one of the most demanding areas early in the game, so it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of the game will run.
To see how the game runs on different CPU types, we simulated dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core CPUs. And from what we can see, Space Marine 2 benefits from the new architecture of the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs (and most likely Intel CPUs too).
Even with only two CPU cores (but with SMT, meaning it supports four threads) the game ran at over 90fps at 1080p/Ultra. SMT/Hyper-Threading is a must for owners of such CPUs. Without it, we had HUGE issues with stuttering.
From the looks of things, the optimal CPU spot is 6 cores. Also, the game runs a bit faster on high-end CPUs if you disable SMT/Hyper-Threading. This should come as no surprise, since the game primarily uses three to four CPU threads.
At 1080p/Ultra, our top four GPUs had no trouble running the game at over 70fps. The NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti was also able to provide a smooth gaming experience.
At 1440p/Ultra, the AMD Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, and NVIDIA RTX4090 were able to provide a smooth experience. Interestingly, while the RTX3080 can keep up with the performance of the AMD RX 6900XT, it is noticeably slower at 1440p (and 4K).
Finally, for native 4K/Ultra, you need an NVIDIA RTX 4090. Unless the CPU is bottlenecked, NVIDIA's high-end GPU can run the game smoothly.
As we said, Space Marine 2 supports DLSS 2 and FSR 2. However, it seems that DLSS 2 is currently having some visual issues. Below is a comparison between Native TAA, Native FSR 2 and DLAA. And as you will see, DLAA looks even blurrier than TAA.
In my opinion, the game is currently best played with Native FSR 2 (at least on high-end GPUs at 4K). We have already informed NVIDIA about this issue, so hopefully the team will work with Saber to improve the implementation of DLSS.
Graphically, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 looks great. This is mainly due to the game's huge battles and amazing art style. Space Marine 2 is one of the few titles that can fit hundreds of enemies on the screen. Yes, the game doesn't have ray tracing. And yes, you will definitely notice some low-resolution textures and some SSR artifacts. Also, the skin shaders look a bit dated. Still, Space Marine 2 has style and is a feast for the eyes. It's one of the few cases where the art does the main work.
Before I conclude, I should note that the game does suffer from some stuttering. Even though it precompiles shaders when you first launch it, there are still slight stuttering issues when compiling shaders. The good news is that these stutters are not as frequent as those we've seen in other games like Dead Space Remake or Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, so most of you might not even notice them. Keyboard and mouse controls are great here too. There are no issues with mouse acceleration or smoothing. I didn't experience any crashes either.
All in all, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 can run smoothly on a wide range of GPUs at 1080p. I have seen reports of issues with older CPUs. However, if you own a modern CPU, most of you won't have any problems. And unlike consoles, PC gamers can get over 60fps on various PC systems. Yes, there are a few stutters here and there. However, they won't ruin your experience. I played for over 3 hours and barely noticed them. So, in general, this is a solid PC release. As I mentioned, it does have some issues, so let's hope Saber does something about them.
Have fun and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and editor-in-chief of DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fanatic and is a huge supporter of the modding and indie communities. Before founding DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. Although he is a diehard PC gamer, his gaming roots lie on consoles. John loved – and still loves – the 16-bit consoles and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. However, the PC platform won him over consoles. This was mainly due to 3DFX and its legendary dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on “The Evolution of PC Graphics Cards”.
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